Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD) plans to aggressively hold the Donald Trump administration responsible for what happened to all of the children separated from parents legally asking for asylum. This disturbing southern border issue is one of the chair of the Oversight committee’s utmost priorities. Trump will find out what it is like to be on the wrong side of a man like Cummings.
The Oversight committee has demanded all the details about the separated children. He wants to know who their parents are, what their parents’ status was, whether their parents were deported, when they were separated, where they were held, what those facilities were like, whether there were efforts to return children to parents, and other details.
Information just surfaced that one child per week was sexually molested on average. Contractors under the supervision of Health and Human Services (HHS) committed these horrid crimes.
The committee’s chairman have the authority to press Trump’s administration for documents and testimony on a wide variety of issues. However, the separate and caged children were among his first priorities, according to NBC News:
‘I believe this is a true national emergency. When our own government rips children from the arms of their mothers and fathers with no plans to reunite them — that is government-sponsored child abuse.’
The Democrats on the House committee had been trying to get the documents from the Department of Justice (DOJ), Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services (HHS) for seven months. The newly Democratically led committee just voted to issue a subpoena to the Trump officials manning these departments.
Over 2,700 children were separated at the border under Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, which was enforced by former attorney general Jeff Sessions (R). It prosecuted anyone captured illegally crossing the border. As part of that policy, Session closed down the border to a trickle of entrants. By placing the parents in jail, children could not go with their parents, so they were separated. Then, the administration had no system in place to re-united them until a judge ordered them re-united.
Recently, an internal watchdog found thousands more children had been separated under this policy than previously reported. They were separated prior to the zero-tolerance police kicked off.
Ranking committee member Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent Cummings a letter arguing his case against the subpoenas. Jordan said the White House had complied with earlier requests by sending reams of documents.
Jordan urged Cummings to “not rush:”
‘We should not rush to compel documents from the departments, especially when they have sought to comply with your request voluntarily.’
Additional Republicans on the committee suggested the members sort through the existing paperwork they already have before deciding to request more data. They also wanted data related to the Obama administration.
Cummings said the existing documents were seriously incomplete:
‘The information we got was not on name, not one number. Zilch.’
The House committee previously authorized a subpoena requiring former acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker to testify, but it was not served. Should any of Trump’s officials ignore the new subpoenas, the entire House is capable of voting to hold an entire department in contempt and would head to court.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
